Ugandan-born Danny Faure was on Sunday afternoon sworn in as President after James Michel resigned only 10 months into his third and final five-year term as president.
54-year-old Faure is taking over as provided by the constitution to complete the final five-year term of Michel whose resignation followed the opposition’s win of majority seats during September’s parliamentary elections.
The new president might face difficulty in the coming days when he presents his policy and new government including a new vice president to the opposition-dominated parliament.
Their rejection will create a deadlock and the only option for the president will be to dissolve the parliament and call a new election. If he dissolves parliament for a second time, he will be mandated to hold a new presidential election.
The 54-year-old was born in Uganda at Kilembe mines in Kasese, 345km from Kampala, to Seychellois parents working at the mines at the time but moved back to Seychelles when Faure was only nine.
According to the Seychelles presidency website, Faure completed his primary and secondary education in the Seychelles and later in the 1980s moved to socialist Cuba where he graduated with a degree in Political Science.
Upon his return to Seychelles in 1985, Mr Faure worked as an assistant curriculum officer in the ministry of education, but at the same time moonlighting as a lecturer at both the now defunct National Youth Service (NYS) and the Seychelles Polytechnic.
In June 1989, he was appointed director of the NYS but was strongly criticised by the opposition until it was phased out in 1998.
At the same time, Mr Faure worked in the structures of the SPPF and would later be appointed chairman of its youth wing and later as member of the party’s elite Central Committee. The SPPF was founded in 1964 by one of the country’s leading political figures, France-Albert René, who also until his death in 2004 served as its chairman.
Several Ugandans have been known to occupy key positions in the Seychelles government, notably Justice Fredrick Egonda-Ntende, who is the country’s Chief Justice and most recently Justice Duncan Gaswaga who was re-appointed as judge of the Supreme Court.
